In response to these questions, contributors trace changes in Canada's demographic make-up, explore the relationship between domestic politics and Canadian foreign policy across the fields of diplomacy, development, defense and security, and immigration, and determine the extent to which Quebec's sensibilities to international issues differ from those of the rest of the country. The World in Canada argues that, under certain conditions, the motivation to pursue certain policy choices arises as much from domestic considerations as from the international conditions associated with them.

2007 marks the 140th anniversary of the Canadian Confederation. The Canada of 2007 is a very different nation than the one that celebrated the Centennial of Confederation in 1967. In the last thirtynine years the nation’s demographics have changed dramatically. The most important and most obvious shift has come in the ethnic makeup of Canada. The nation’s chief source of immigrants are nations and regions far removed from the homelands of Canada’s traditional two founding peoples, French and English-speaking. To observe the students crowding into almost any public school in the nation today is to see that the peoples of...

1
A Question of Degree:
The Prime Minister, Political Leadership, and Canadian Foreign Policy
(pp. 16-30)

ADAM CHAPNICK

Does the prime minister control Canadian foreign policy? In a country caught in the midst of a profound demographic and cultural transformation, are the personalities and leadership styles in Ottawa important contributors to the political direction of the nation on the world stage? A quick glance at recent headlines would suggest yes. In 2004, the journalist and commentator Andrew Cohen (A12) called external affairs “the area which could offer the prime minister the best chance to make a difference.” Only days after the Conservatives won the 2006 election, theToronto Starran the line “Harper’s Latin American Challenge” across the...

Data from the 2001 Census reveals that Canada is increasingly multiethnic and multicultural. In 2001, more than 18 percent of the population was foreign born — the highest percentage in seventy years.¹ On a per capita basis, Canada accepts significantly more immigrants than any other G8 country.² Today most immigrants are from Asia, whereas Europe was the main source fifty years ago. The trends are clear: Canada’s ethnic composition is increasingly diverse, much of our foreign-born population comprises very recent arrivals, and our newcomers of the past decade have been drawn from areas of the globe very different from the major...

This chapter presents an analysis of the role that diasporas play in contributing to and preventing conflict in Jamaica and Haiti. Canada has long claimed to have a “special” relationship with both countries; language, geography, economics, and political considerations have all played a role in the formation and evolution of these relationships, while sustained migration from both Caribbean countries to Canada’s largest cities — Toronto and Montreal, in particular — has entrenched them over time.

Both Jamaica and Haiti experience domestic troubles, and instability in each country has implications for Canadian security. Canada has repeatedly taken a lead role in international interventions...

Let me begin this chapter with two quotations that suggest the problematic relationship of multiculturalism and Canadian foreign policy. The first is by the Toronto journalist, Zuhair Kashmeri, who publishedThe Gulf Within: Canadian Arabs, Racism and the Gulf Warin 1991. Kashmeri argued that Canada had failed to consider “the views of its large Arab and Muslim communities before it decided to join the US-sponsored coalition in the Gulf.” Such action was simply unacceptable to him, and he then quoted the views of a Reverend Tad Mitsui of the United Church of Canada, who saw “race involved in judging...

They may not have agreed upon much else, but Jacques Parizeau and Jean Chrétien seemed to take seriously the impact that demographic change could have on domestic and foreign policy. And while it may seem odd, even jarring, to link together in one title these two political adversaries from Quebec, each is remembered (one more than the other) for a trenchant observation made in respect of the role that diasporas could have in shaping national and international policy agendas.

Parizeau’s observation, of course, came in the immediate aftermath of the Parti Québécois’s narrow loss in the 1995 referendum on sovereignty...

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Muslim Communities:
The Pitfalls of Decision-Making in Canadian Foreign Policy
(pp. 109-122)

SAMI AOUN

The question of diasporas has only recently occupied centre-stage in the analyses of international scholars and foreign policy experts. There is no doubt that this recent preoccupation was long overdue, given the expanding role of diasporas as actors in an increasingly globalized post-Westphalian international system. Nevertheless, some studies have emphasized the involvement of diasporas and the reinforcement of their role in international politics (Sheffer; Bruno; and in particular Shain and Barth, 449–79). In fact, free from state-centric reasoning, diasporas as transnational ethnic and cultural groups belonging to both their host country and their countries of origin can build political...

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Just How Liberal and Democratic Is Canadian Foreign Policy?
(pp. 123-148)

CHRISTIAN LEUPRECHT and TODD HATALEY

We wondered why Canadian foreign and defense priorities (outputs) appear to diverge markedly from Canadian public opinion (inputs) on foreign and defense policy. In this chapter we seek to postulate a plausible explanation for this puzzle — the institutional constraints imposed by Canada’s relationship with the United States complemented by growing structural constraints due to greater ethnocultural heterogeneity — and work out the broader implications for Canadian democracy. Rather than being aligned with the will of “the Canadian people,” this chapter hypothesizes that Canadian foreign policy is actually structurally contingent upon the Canada-US relationship as well as institutionally contingent upon a ruling...

One of the perpetual questions in any examination of the Canadian mindset concerns attitudes toward the United States. This is not surprising given the dominant role played by US culture, politics, and economics in daily Canadian life and, therefore, in Canada’s self-image. With the blurring of lines demarcating national policy and international policy, a process that has accelerated in post-9/11 North America, US security concerns — at home and abroad — have had increasing implications for Canada’s own security postures and economic prosperity.

Calling for a more “sophisticated relationship,” the Liberal Government of Paul Martin issued an International Policy Statement in April...

When the Liberal Party of Canada assumed power in autumn 1993, it was faced with an unexpected official opposition: the Bloc Québécois (BQ). This organization, then led by the former Conservative minister Lucien Bouchard, was a sovereignist party that intended to defend Quebec’s interests in Ottawa pending the province’s accession to the status of independent state. The title of official opposition implied among other things that the sovereignists, who had until then been mainly present on the provincial scene, would in future have to delve into questions falling under federal jurisdiction that they’d almost never had to deal with in...

During the past few years, a forty-year-old debate centred on the nature of Quebec’s international presence has surfaced once again. In summer and early autumn 2005, two Quebec ministers, Monique Gagnon-Tremblay in International Relations and Benoît Pelletier in Intergovernmental Affairs, voiced opinions that were dissenting from Ottawa’s position that calls for “One country — one voice” in the conduct of international relations. They argued that Quebec should be actively involved in the crafting of Canada’s international stance in areas that fall under provincial jurisdiction and that it should speak with its own voice in some forums, such as UNESCO, where matters...

The “World in Canada” volume intended to find answers to the question: to what extent does Canada’s ethnic, linguistic, and religiously diverse population impact Canadian foreign policy? A second and strongly related question was: just exactly how is foreign policy made in Canada anyway? Many of the authors in this volume addressed these questions directly or indirectly. Adam Chapnick examined the role of the prime minister in the process, using instances of decision-making that go as far back as the governments of William Lyon Mackenzie King. His conclusion is that a prime minister can indeed have a great impact on...